The Roots of Microsoft in Albuquerque

A few years after we moved to Albuquerque, I was working as a contractor for a small print and web shop. The owner was a long-time Albuquerquean with a million stories about people he had run into over the years both famous and not-so-famous.

One day he said, “I knew Bill Gates.”

“You did not,” I said.

“I did,” he said, “he lived here when he started Microsoft!”

“He did not,” I said.

“Yes,” he ascertained, “he really did.”

And it’s true! Bill and Paul Allen messed around with computer equipment only a few blocks away from where I now live between the 1965 and 1979 and my old colleague delivered print material to someone in the building or something like that. Can you imagine how different Albuquerque and Seattle would be today if they stayed in New Mexico?

There is an amazing permanent exhibit at the natural History Museum that showcases and details the story of their time in our fair city. I recommend you check it out, it’s pretty cool. But there is also a plaque which I didn’t know about until the other day, when my husband and I practically tripped over it on one of our  neighborhood strolls. It’s on a street corner just off Central and California, next to a little old nondescript building where they presumably worked on their stuff.

The plaque

The building

The building